COLLECTION
Stories connected by a shared idea.
A poor man mends a swallow's broken legs and its gourd seed makes him rich; his greedy brother breaks a swallow's legs on purpose, and his gourds ruin him. Yet the story does not stop at Nolbu's ruin: the oldest copy and the great pansori libretto end with Heungbu taking his brother in.
Read story 10 min readA tiger came to the door in their mother's clothes, and a brother and sister escaped up a rope from heaven to become the sun and the moon. Koreans place such stories in the days when tigers smoked tobacco, yet this one was first written down in the twentieth century, and the oldest full text we have read gives the sun to the brother.
Read story 11 min read
